Gun Control

Stronger Laws Might Make Capital Safer

July 01, 1996

Guns in the wrong hands have turned Virginia's capital city into Dodge City.

Two people recently were wounded in a daylight sidewalk shooting at Seventh and Grace streets, where Richmond's grand department stores used to be, two blocks from the Capitol. And that's not the worst of it.

You don't have to exit onto the mean streets of downtown to be threatened in Richmond. There has been a series of about a dozen apparently random shootings at vehicles, mostly on Interstates 95 and 64, in and around Richmond this week. Miraculously, no one has been hurt. The State Police has stepped up patrols on the interstates.

Virginia needs stronger gun control. We propose licensing purchasers of handguns, contingent on their having completed a course on responsible use of firearms; requiring gun owners to show cause to a judge why they should be issued a permit to carry concealed weapons in public; and expanding the list of public places where guns are banned.

Meantime, Hampton Roads is not exactly a gun-free zone:

* Two men were charged with robbery and use of a firearm after a woman's purse was snatched at Coliseum Mall in Hampton.

* Two suspects have been charged on six counts apiece, including use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, after a Hampton man was robbed at gunpoint by six men who forced their way into a house on Ridgelake Drive.

* A Suffolk man was shot in the arm when two other people were examining a .22-caliber pistol in the next room of a house and it went off.

* A 20-year-old Norfolk man was wounded in a drive-by shooting, police said.